Sierra Leone: Sarah McAllister Kelley ’09
While working for the nonprofit Water of Life, Sarah McAllister Kelley ’09 made the trip to Sierra Leone, West Africa, to drill a new water well for a local village.
While working for the nonprofit Water of Life, Sarah McAllister Kelley ’09 made the trip to Sierra Leone, West Africa, to drill a new water well for a local village.
Before Rachel Lang-Baldé’s first trip to West Africa in 2002, she never knew anyone who had died in childbirth. During her almost four years spent in Guinea as an English teacher and consultant with community health and education nongovernmental organizations, she would come to know many mothers who wouldn’t survive to hold their own child or even hear their first cries.
One of her close friends, a doctor in Guinea named “Mama” Condé, became one of those mothers who died during childbirth. Condé and Lang-Baldé had often talked about doing research that would help shed light on birth outcomes and maternal health in Guinea. Thanks to a Fulbright U.S. student grant, Lang-Baldé is headed to Guinea in January to begin such research. A Ph.D. student in international family and community studies, Lang-Baldé is one of four Clemson students selected to receive the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants this year. The grants provide funding to live and study abroad on research projects or to work as English teaching assistants.
The other Fulbright U.S. Student Program recipients from Clemson are:
Clemson also has two semifinalists this year: Caroline Hensley, a health science/English double major from Waxhaw, North Carolina, and Kaitlyn Scola, a genetics/microbiology major from Charlotte.